Grouping the elephant in Palestine, Indonesia

Hidayat Jati, Researcher, Jakarta

We all have heard the cliche. A group of people, blindfolded, is feeling an elephant. None of them failed to identify the animal in its entirety. Their limited perception inevitably confined their senses to some specific parts of the animal. Its trunk, its tail, its feet, etc.

In some ways, this is also the case when some of the mainstream Indonesian media sees the bloody conflict in Palestine. Similarly, this limited -- and flawed -- perception is also present in some of the criticism, frequently veiled in the form of news analyses/commentaries, on Indonesia's supposedly lax performance in the "war against terror".

The blindfold is not a piece of cloth. It is a piece of mind -- that is of prejudice, fear and perhaps, paranoia.

Let's start with the flawed perception on our side, the Indonesians'. The best example is perhaps represented by two disturbing recent reports produced by the Tempo media group, undoubtedly one of the nation's most progressive publishing groups. First, Koran Tempo ran as its headline Israel's continued brutal incursion while conveniently omitted two preceding incidents of suicide bombings allegedly conducted by Palestinians. Second, the Tempo magazine in a photo caption in its main story described those who committed such actions as "martyrs".

We should take the cue from Mahathir Mohamad -- an unlikely champion of objectivity in this case. Suicide bombings are not noble. They are deplorable. However, one should not be to fixated on suicide bombings (easier if you are not Israelis) to the extent that one fails to recognize that such actions, ultimately and tragically, are by products.

Ariel Sharon, armed with tanks and considerable domestic approval ratings, justified his brutality as means to uproot "terrorist infrastructure", including those, so he claimed, to be found in refugee camps. What he did not say but clearly did was that further collective punishment was to be conducted against Palestinians. As one American Jewish intellectual said, the infrastructure that a terrorist requires is nothing but a certain heart and mind.

Why else, as in the case of a recent would-be suicide bomber, did a young mother try to blow herself up? The answer must have something to do with extreme despair and anger resulted by the occupation and by Ariel Sharon's savage stupidity. We shall see how such sentiment flares after we hear the full story of what truly happened in Jenin. This is the full animal, the elephant.

After looking critically at the way some members of the Indonesian press cover the violence in the Middle East, one inevitably looks at the demonstrations held by thousands of activists across the country to denounce Israel. These actions, have been unjustifiably lumped together with, by some ignorant and condescending "observers", Indonesia's "lax performance" in the "war against terror".

To demonstrate against Israel does not make one necessarily supportive to terrorism. It just reflects the power of religious symbols and senses of community, and perhaps, to the eye of an economist, the problems of unemployment in this country.

The rallies have been relatively peaceful. No expatriate has been attacked. The climate of fear that last surfaced during the early stages of the war in Afghanistan was due to a combination of factors. They included our government officials' poor PR skills, and the insolent bravado of some radical groups.

Now let's turn to law enforcement in the "war against terror". Corruption runs rampant. Kangaroo courts prevail. Army units fight each other over turf and the money that comes with it, as a recent murder in Papua suggests. Militia groups emerged in local conflicts such as in Maluku and were never punished.

But where was the noise coming out of Washington over these issues? Where were the ramblings out of Singapore (either from its newspaper or government -- the two are virtually the same) on the failure to uphold law and order over conflict-torn places in Indonesia, most of which are far away from embassies and business centers? Why was this energy missing when the "terrorist" issues in Indonesia lack an apparent international dimension?

Perhaps there were voices of concern from the outside when the problems were still "purely local". But they were certainly less audible that the demands made to Indonesian security forces to arrest some Islamic activists, "radical" as they may be, merely on possible intent or on a report made by a foreign newspaper. How come all these huffs and puffs arise only when some of the foreign interests, as in the case of the safety of their embassies', said to be in danger -- and not when thousands of Indonesian civilians were slaughtered in Maluku?

This selectively flawed perception will surely monopolize the context of very intricate situations. To see the Palestinian conflict without taking into account the complex combination of factors would be incomplete and misguided. Such factors, just to name a few, include: The Israeli military occupation, Ariel Sharon's brutality, Israel's right to exist, Hammas' violence and Yasser Arafat's many shortcomings.

Such crude simplicity should also be avoided amidst this problematic "war against terror". A crude view will monopolize the issue and unnecessarily polarize the intended audience. The Bush Administration, with so many of its one-liners and unilateral postures and policies, have clearly "Americanized" what should have been a global concern -- as if the entire world is an avid watcher of Fox News!

It is no great surprise to see the Bush Administration, with its "hawkish" inclination, resorting to the brutal absolutism of "us and them" language such as "Enduring Freedom", "with us or against us", "Axis of Evil", and indeed, "war against terror". This is unavoidable after Sept. 11, a terrible incident which had made America less unique in a world full of violent conflicts. Bush was not alone in this; Osama bin Laden tried to divide the world between "infidels" and "martyrs".

If this continues to be the pattern, it would be very difficult for a moderate political climate to emerge in Indonesia, the Middle East, or the United States for that matter. Applying and appreciating complexities, of course, does not equate obscuring the principles of justice.

Rights and wrongs, oppressors and victims, can and should still be identified, comparatively speaking, even when one strays away from the monopoly of meaning. I'm not advocating a perpetual post-modernist drift here. However the deliberation over simplification is, in essence, fanaticism in masquerade. When such a view prevails, the elephant has already trampled us.